TV for the colour blind: Eyeteq software helps viewers to differentiate between red and green more easily

Home »TV for the colour blind: Eyeteq software helps viewers to differentiate between red and green more easily

TV for the colour blind: Eyeteq software helps viewers to differentiate between red and green more easily

Posted by sciencetech-blog on Friday, December 5, 2014 Label:

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Everyday tasks such as getting dressed, differentiating between red and green lights and watching television can be problematic for the 10 per cent of people who are colour blind.

But they could soon be able to see things in television programmes that they could never see before, thanks to new research.

Scientists have created software that allows colour blind viewers to better differentiate between red and green and it could be embedded in TV set-top boxes in a matter of months.

Scientists have created a system that allows colour blind viewers to better differentiate between red and green and it could be embedded in TV set-top boxes in a matter of months. Pictured above is an image before (left) and after (right) the technology was used to differentiate colours

Colour blindness affects 250 million worldwide. The condition means that those affected cannot see images, including TV, with as much clarity as those with normal vision.

The 'Eyeteq' technology, developed by researchers at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, allows colour blind people to see details they previously could not with minimal impact on the picture for 'colour normals' – people who do not have colour blindness.

The idea is that people with and without colour blindness could watch TV together – an activity, which can currently be difficult, especially if viewers are fans of cookery shows or snooker, for example.

WHAT IS COLOUR BLINDNESS?

Around five per cent of the global population is colour blind - 10 per cent of men.

That works out at around 10 people in a cinema and 7,000 supporters in a football stadium.

Red-green colour blindness is the most common kind and its most common form is deuteranomaly, which is cause by a mutation to tiny cones in the eye, which are less sensitive to green light.

Protanomaly is the next most common form of colour blindness, affecting 1.3 per cent of men. Cones are shifted to the left and are less sensitive to red light.

Around 1.3 per cent of men have a form of colour blindness called protanopia and are unable to distinguish between green, yellow and red, while blue-yellow colour blindness is much less common.

The Eyetech technology is designed to support most forms.

Based on research from UEA's school of Computer Sciences, Eyeteq uses mathematical perception models to modify image colours, so that both still and moving images are improved.

The scientists have made their innovation available to TV manufacturers and it's hoped that they will choose to embed it in sets and set-top boxes in coming months.

'This image-enhancement technology will help to improve the viewing experience for colour blind people,' said Professor Graham Finlayson from the university's School of Computing Sciences.

'With Eyeteq enabled, content streamed to a set top box is enhanced on a frame-by-frame basis before being transmitted to the TV screen.

'It would be available to users as an option in the accessibility menu. Programmes which contain a large amount of red and green in their images such as sports, cookery and nature, would be particularly enhanced.'

Christopher Cytera, managing director of Spectral Edge, the spin-out company taking the research to market, said: 'Our Eyeteq technology has been proven to enhance the still image viewing experience for colour-blind people, and we are now extending this to TV and video content.

'Service providers and set top box manufacturers can see the benefits in increasing accessibility to colour blind viewers and Eyeteq provides the perfect solution for the living room TV screen.

'Our trials have proved the concept, and it is now ready for integration into prime time consumer technology to transform how colour blind people, and their families, watch TV.'

The Eyetech software could be embedded into a TV set-top box in the coming months because it is available to TV manufacturers. It's designed so that people with and without colour blindness can enjoy the same programmes at the same time

HOW DOES EYETECH WORK?

Improving images for colour blind people is an old problem and while dedicated maps, signs and websites exist, for example, videos and tv programmes can be a problem.

A well-known technique to solve the problem is daltonization, which works by substituting colours that are invisible to colour blind observers with other colours, without considering the overall appearance of pictures.

But the scientists found the method boots visibility, it generates pictures that are disliked by people without colour blindness.

Eyeteq uses a different tact and gently modifies colour in images in a way that's useful to colour blind viewers and bystanders.

'With careful design using mathematical perception models, we are able to remap colours to maximise discrimination for colour blind people, at the same as minimising the strength of the effect for non-colour blind people,' the company said.

'In mathematics we call this a perceptually-weighted regularised joint optimisation methodology operating on local scale.'

So while people with colour blindness enjoy enhanced details, non-colour blind people don't mind or at times prefer the resulting images.

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